I have a masters degree in theology. What many do not realize is that starting in the 2nd Century—while orthodox Christianity was spreading like wildfire throughout the Roman empire—numerous non-Christian cults, competing with Christianity—started trying to adopt the idea of Jesus as one of their own.
The writings which make up the New Testament were done by AD 90 or 100 at the latest. Liberal scholars’ ideas—from 75 and 100 years ago—that the NT were 2nd or 3rd Century writings have been thoroughly refuted—hence NT scholarship, liberal & conservative, today admits that the NT books are from the 1st Century.
The liberal (Dan Brown-esque) argument now, is that the Church had no idea which books to include or exclude as authentic until the 4th Century—and so scholarship should include mid-2nd to 3rd Century writings as possibly true accounts-—even though these were written some 100 to 200 years AFTER the NT books we actually find in our bibles.
It would be like finding a book written about George Washington—purporting to be a true eye-witness account (but without any references) written in 1890 or 1950, and somehow giving it equal weight to the writings about Washington by Jefferson, Hamilton, or Franklin.
If you know anything at all about the late Roman empire, these folks were many things...but they weren’t uneducated, stupid, ill-informed, or naive when it came to historical writings.
The leaders of the Christian church were not ignorant about what was the written “testimony of the Apostles” (as the New Testament was then often called) from the 1st Century, compared to what other religious groups—in direct opposition and competition to orthodox Christianity—were saying about Jesus, some 150+ (or 200+ in this text’s claimed age) after Jesus walked the earth.
There is a whole body of literature from this period called the Gnostic gospels, which are completely known to scholars (with no dark conspiracy covering up things deep in the Vatican). The reason these are not popularly known—is that scholars (or anyone with a brain) who reads them will know they are fanciful works of fiction—very much unlike the character of the New Testament gospels—and unless one is interested in 2nd or 3rd Century culture—are worthless in understanding the historical Jesus crucified (and raised...) in AD 30.
Conspiracy theories are fun...but the reason serious scholarship, over time, usually rejects them—is that they are most often proven merely products of the imagination.
The idea that the “real” Jesus was markedly different than what the earliest, most thoroughly authenticated books in the world—eye-witness testimonies, paint him to be... is just another fanciful conspiracy, by people who really don’t like Jesus’ claims.
I have a bunch of the gnostic texts, including Robinsons “the Nag Hammadi Library” (HarperCollins, 1990) and agree most of it does not deserve serious scholarship.
But I am constantly wondering how much editing actually happened early on when the Council of Nicea occurred.
I should say, though, that one of my books is Murdocks Syriac Testament, translated about 1850 from the known Peshito versions (known at that time), and it pretty much agrees with the translations from the Greek. The language can be described as more “earthy”, more like the way a common man would speak.
Perhaps we will never know. On a personal level for me, it makes little difference whether he was married or not, no doubt there were a couple female followers he was close to, it says something in my mind that some of the other apostles seemed to complain about how close he was to Mary.
And as an aside, one of the things he preached about was marriage itself, his hatred of divorce.